CECH: SOLID START

Petr Cech believes the first result of the Rafael Benitez reign, a goalless draw with Manchester City, should be seen as a positive given our recent run of form.

It was a match with very few clear-cut opportunities at either end, and while both teams will probably feel they could have stolen it, a draw was a fair reflection of how the game developed.

As an attacking unit, Benitez will undoubtedly hope for an improvement in the weeks to come, but having failed to keep a clean sheet for the past 10 games, Cech was delighted to have shut the champions out.

‘I think it was a positive result,’ said the Blues goalkeeper. ‘We’ve been on a spell where we haven’t been winning games and we’ve been losing, so we wanted to stop that.

‘We played the champions, it was an interesting performance in a way, but we kept a clean sheet and, at times, we were a danger, so it was a good start.

‘It’s never easy when a new manager comes in because he doesn’t have time to work, so it’s good to start with a positive result.’

The performance itself, with Benitez understandably focusing on making us more solid and tougher to break down, was in contrast to some of our displays earlier this season, where an expansive, free-flowing style of play was on view. The events of the past few weeks, however, which have seen us fall from table-toppers to fourth in the Premier League, while leaving our hopes of qualifying for the knockout stages of the Champions League hanging by a thread, have ensured that the Spaniard, for the time being at least, must focus solely on getting back to winning football matches.

‘We, as players, need to adapt quickly and start thinking positively in order to work with the manager and give him what he needs to help get results,’ explained Cech.

‘We need to put things right, we got a good point, and hopefully on Wednesday we’ll win our game and push on from there.

‘He’s here to change things, to put us in a winning mode and he needs to be given a chance.’